First Fantasy, Part Three

Hello Tonight we bring the Final Fantasy XIII series into a close. I'll be honest here: I did not actually finish the game yet. After spending some eight hours, if not more, just grinding Chapter 11 I got back on track until I hit a wall with Chapter 12's last boss. I've got Chapter 13 left but that's just a series of boss battles and I'm currently not too keen on going back to finish. Despite that I figure I have enough to go on to give you, my readers, the lowdown.

I like FFXIII. I like it a lot. It's a great game that has a few flaws ranging from minor to serious. The biggest problem here is pacing. This is something at which FFXIII fails spectacularly. Most of the game is smooth sailing. Some level here or there drags out a little bit but mostly you get through without a single gray hair. I'm not a complete stranger to JRPGs so I had prepared myself beforehand for several hours worth of level grinding. To my surprise that wasn't necessary for the most part. FFXIII lets you pick your battles and for the most part of the first nine chapters I took on all enemies I came across, hoping to cut back on future grinding. Towards the end of Chapter 9 when the plot started thickening I started skimping on fights as I yearned for the next plot point to drop. Despite that I handled even the last boss of Chapter 10 without any trouble. In fact I don't think I got stuck a single time throughout the game up to that point.

Chapter 11 throws all that out of the window. This is the point where the game becomes nonlinear. You have a set of vast plains inhabited by monsters and at long last sidequests. I figure I'd spend a few hours grinding and then be on my way, seeing as I'd been doing so well so far. In the end I spend eight or nine hours just grinding. Some grizzled old RPG veteran might laugh at me now, whining about measly eight hours of grinding and I take offense at that. Despite my lack of familiarity with JRPGs I am no stranger to grinding itself. My average playthrough of Gothic 2 takes 30 hours and I'm fairly sure at least 10 hours out of that is spent grinding. No, the issue here is that in FFXIII all of the grinding has been shoved into one big pile. If Gothic 2 forced me to grind for 10 hours in a row I would probably call bullshit even on that one of most hallowed of games as it currently stands. I swallowed my pride and hard did I grind. That isn't the final insult here. No, the final insult is that I spent eight hours in a row grinding and it wasn't enough. As I said, I'm stuck. This one boss just keeps wiping me out. Apparently I really should've gone and spent four hours more.

I'll be positive for a moment. Chapter 11, Grind Central, does make grinding very easy. There are several monster types around and there's plenty of all of them. Moreover, you get the set of 55 sidequests, ranging from tough to balls-out frightening. This gives your grinding some direction since you can work your way up a list. But this is still an issue because it makes the game terribly uneven. All action plot-wise halts completely. This is not smart design. I should point out that the pacing isn't the only uneven thing about Chapter 11. Difficulty is another, and in more ways than one. As I said, I handled the final boss of Chapter 10 without any sort of difficulty at all and that was before I had to refine my playing strategy. And supposing that this particular boss is a fluke, I didn't have any trouble earlier either. Yet with Chapter 11 I was getting my ass handed to me by some of the most basic enemies around. This whole Chapter stinks of uneven design because the monsters running across the field are completely mixed. The weak foes run with the tough. And even though the sidequests are supposedly ordered around some semblance of slowly building difficulty curve, it gets terribly uneven at times. The first sidequest is easy as pie but I had to spend a good few hours grinding before finally getting through the second one. And later on they get just crazy...

OK, I think I've made my case: Chapter 11 sucks. The rest of the chapter is spent running around mildly disinteresting dungeons. Chapter 12 opened with panache and style and with a pace that belied how bogged down the rest of the chapter gets with you basically running into random boss fights along the street. This is the endgame when all the threads finally join together but it takes you an hour to get down a single street because every enemy is a demigod. Pacing fails once again.

Ah, hell, I'll try to be positive again. Yes, Final Fantasy XIII is definitely a good game. I enjoyed playing it immensely. As frustrating as the grinding was because it prevented me from enjoying the plot, I still had fun playing. The major design choice of the combat gameplay, taking the emphasis off of choosing which moves you're taking that turn and putting it instead on the Paradigms, controlling what your characters can do, paid out very well. I imagine that for someone more experienced with JRPGs it's a great change of pace, unless you're the sort of jaded old bastard that hates changes utterly and completely, just the kind person who burned all their Genesis records when they made Phil Collins the lead singer. This is new and it is good, I say.

At times a little more control over your teammates would have been very welcome. The biggest punch you can pull with your character is summoning a magical creature called an Eidolon to fight alongside you. As an idea it's not terribly original but it worked like it was supposed to and was good fun. But it was kind of dull that you can only use the Eidolon of the party leader. There were a few Eidolons I never got around to using because I never used those characters as my party leader. Looking at this from a 'realistic' angle, what's stopping the other two party members from summoning their Eidolons? Actually nothing, because in the relatively awesome cutscene that opens Chapter 12 we get to see all the Eidolons together, wreaking havoc. And another minor annoyance: if the party leader falls in battle, it's game over. This again doesn't make sense from a practical point of view. If your current party has a member capable of healing, why not allow the party leader to be resurrected, something that can be done to other party members. Or if you have the resurrecting item, Phoenix Down, in your inventory. Why not automatically remove one Phoenix Down from your inventory and get on with the show? This is never explained and is annoying mostly for being so stupid.

Despite my praise, I do understand the sentiments of the "Any Final Fantasy made after VII is bad" -camp. I would rather die than play thirteen of these games. I doubt that Final Fantasy XIII or Final Fantasy XII is much worse that the hallowed Final Fantasy VII. It's just that they're all pretty similar from where I stand. But I suppose that I'd have to play all the games to make that judgment and I am never going to do that. At all. That's my final verdict. Final Fantasy XIII is a good and enjoyable game. If that changes because you've seen it all before, tough noogie, but I understand where you're coming from.

That's that. If I do get around to really finishing the game I'll drop any important thoughts by you. If not, we have Splinter Cell: Conviction and some nice topical topics lined up. Good times.